Thursday December 3, 2020 by WannaskaWriter

A 'reduced dialect version' excerpt from The Raven: Northwest Minnesota’s Original Art, History & Humor Journal (1994-2018) “Sven & Ula Do Ireland: 2003.”

“Have you heard the story of Castlefreke?” Joe Lyons asked, his whole face a smile as he walked with Ula across the road to a new gate and high-overwire fence liberally posted with ‘No Trespassing’ signs.https://www.castles.nl/castle-freke
“Yah, ‘twas in the airplane magazine, “Carra,” I found the story of Castlefreke,” answered Ula.
“Well, this is it…” Joe said, pointing through the thin stand of saplings between us and an immense castle ruin atop a hill about 600 yards away.
Sven walked the fence-line to find a good location between the trees where he could get a good shot with his new digital camera. He turned his camera to the sky first, so that the pre-focus mechanism would be set on infinite, otherwise, the camera would focus on the trees and the castle would be just a blur. Things were bad enough that they were so far away; at best the castle would still look tiny.
Sven had missed out on some of Joe’s story about Castlefreke. “. . .  I was stationed there during the war. The staircases inside were so wide that seven men could walk abreast up them; the dance floor was built on wheels and revolved around the musicians.
“The shame of it all occurred after the war, when Castlefreke was sold to an outsider, who didn’t know its history and allowed it to go to ruin.
“New Age Travellers ... ,” Joe Lyons began.
“Tinkers?” Ula interjected.
“Yes,” Joe answered, “ . . . came in and scavenged everything of value from the castle. They stripped off all the wood trim, that had been handcrafted by the finest woodcarvers, and they used it for firewood! They took off all the lead and copper from the roof and towers of the castle, and sold it for scrap! The whole thing was ravaged! .
“He bought Castlefreke for seven-hundred and fifty pounds to our shame, or disgrace, our loss! He’s since sold it to people who are of the old family; I know them, and had it been earlier in the day, I may have been able to get you in. Oh, I tell you it was grand!”
The group didn’t linger there.
Ula suggested Hulda ride with Joe -— to his delight -- and so the entourage sped on into the setting sun, the evening closing in around them all too quickly.
Stopping in someone’s driveway, their B&B sign against the side of the house, Joe pointed out another castle ruin well below the road, that he said was a example of eccentricism as it was built with a chimney for every month, a door for every week, and a window for every day of the year. Sven understood him to say that the man was kindly and generous, and when upon returning home one day in his carriage to find the thing ablaze, he simply turned the carriage around the way he came and was never seen again.
A woman, her hair up in a scarf, came out of her house to inquire of their visit when Joe approached her, his hand out to shake hers, and identified himself.
“Oh I know you Joe! Good to see you…” the women said happily.
Joe quickly explained their mission; the woman glanced at the sun peering over the horizon its red glow just visible and she said, ‘Yes, go on! You have little time! Goodbye!” And they sped away, the woman waving behind them.
Turning down a hidden road, Joe led Ula onto Drombeg Circle, a place of which the group were completely ignorant, Ula driving with both hands on the wheel as he negotiated turn after turn in the ensuing dusk. http://www.megalithicireland.com/Drombeg.htma
“We would’ve never found this road without Joe, where’d he go?” Ula said, looking well ahead of the Dooley van, momentarily out of visual contact with the tiny car, driven by a man they had met only an hour before, carrying his wife.
“Ye know Ula, if you heard your boys doing something like this on their travels,” Sven said, “you’d think them daft—without a lick of sense.”
“Yah, Sven dis iss crazy, I know… but Hulda can take care of herself fer shure, yew seen it. I seen her shoulder a Holstein against the parlor rail more’n once, Sven. She’s built like an army tank, low to the ground and all-terrain. I ain’t worried about her, it’s Joe Lyons. If he says something out-of-line to Hulda, as lovingly sweet dat woman iss, (Yew know how she can get, Sven), if he says something out-of-line she’ll knock the ol’ boy unconscious, and den how are we going to find our way outa here, Sven? Dis ain’t Palmville, yew know…We need dat guy…”
About that time the Toyota came into view, stopped on a distant hill. Ula sped up to catch them. Leaving their vehicles at a narrow gate in a fence, the six walked a path to several large stones standing on end in the ground placed in a large circle some twenty-feet in diameter.
Monique, whose psychic sensitivities often approach wonder, ‘felt’ sick upon approach of the circle and wanted to go back to the van, when she learned from Joe, that aside from the ancient assemblage being a sun clock, it was also a human sacrificial site where children had been offered to the gods. She walked wide of the circle and stayed beside Sven as he and the others listened to Joe talk about Drombeg and its ancient history. She was glad to leave as Joe hurried them off to one last place a few more miles down the road at Glandore. https://glandorevillage.ie/
At our approach, Joe apologized for not getting them to Glandore before the sun went down but everyone thought it beautiful all the same. He looked at his watch and begged their pardon that he had to soon leave. He embraced Hulda lovingly and shook hands in farewell with Sven and Ula, waved at Monique and Heide sitting nearby on a stone wharf above the harbor, talking. The sun was but a pink and orange glow in the sky and washed the sea in its dying pastel hues.
Across the street was an inn that was a B&B. However, the group learned they were under renovation and weren’t currently available. The man there said to Sven that had they come during tourist season they could’ve seen the harbor full of yachts and sailboats, but Sven replied they hadn’t missed a thing and how they all appreciated the harbor looking serene and beautiful as it did that evening. Hulda asked the man about B&B’s in nearby Union Hall. He said there were some there but didn’t know if they were open. https://www.google.com /search?q=How+far+is+Union+hall+ireland+from+Galndore%2C+Ireland%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b
Union Hall was a fishing village, where under huge lights fishing trawlers unloaded their catch and seemed the only activity in town. Although Ula did a good job driving the Dooley Van in such tight, restricting places that were built more for pony and cart than for cars or trucks, Hulda’s gasps, loud inhalations, and shrieks, steered Ula around obstacles real or imagined in the darkness. A farm tractor with a round hay bale on it, appeared suddenly out of the darkness from one of the very narrow rear vertical roads and came so close to the Dooley Van, that it scared them all into laughter.
It was one of those fast tractors with front-wheel assist and a big cab with clearance lights on it that seemed so prevalent on Ireland's rural road systems where farmers drove their tractors into town on errands every day and were parked like pickup trucks at the restaurants along the curb. A tractor out at night like this, wasn’t uncommon at all except to tourists like them.
  They found Maria’s Schoolhouse, a hostel, a welcome port in the storm of unfamiliar darkness. Sven and Ula went to the door and walked in. Inside, the building was huge and brightly lit with man lamps and ceiling lights. There was a man that was bringing food on plates to a number of teenage people, something Sven thought Heide would enjoy after being cooped-up with four old people the last several days, but unfortunately there were no rooms available there either. The best bet was to return to the main highway, N71, and go to Skibbereen … and so they did.